Devil in Disguise

by Julian Clary

  ‘Er, yes,’ said the doctor. ‘It looks like a fairly straightforward case of heart failure to me. How was the deceased’s health?’

  ‘Not good,’ Molly said gravely. ‘He had a stroke a few years ago and was left completely incapacitated by it. He’s required full-time care and feeding since then. He’s always looked terribly frail, I must say.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Yes, that makes sense. I’m happy to fill out the death certificate with heart failure as the cause. I really don’t want to give Mrs Delvard any more distress than is necessary, but—’ He stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Molly.

  ‘I just wondered if the dog slept in this room — more specifically, on the bed.’

  ‘Yes, Heathcliff often sleeps there. Why?’

  ‘There are an awful lot of dog hairs around the deceased, that’s all. All over the pillow and even some in his mouth.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that when I was giving him mouth-to-mouth,’ Molly said, frowning.

  ‘Hmm.’ The doctor shrugged. ‘Well, it doesn’t have any bearing on the death. It’s quite clear as far as I can see. Here is a copy of the death certificate. You may ring the undertaker whenever you wish.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Molly said.

  ‘Now, I shall have a quick with word with our paramedic friends and then join you in the other room.’

  When Molly returned to the lounge, Lilia was showing WPC Jones her scrapbook.

  ‘This is me with Noël Coward at his country estate in Kent. He wrote a song about me, called “Alice Is At It Again”. Most amusing. And here I am with Princess Grace of Monaco. Such an elegant woman. She left me some trinkets in her will, but of course I never received them. Perhaps you could investigate for me.’

  ‘The Monaco police would be the ones to contact about that,’ said Gail, a slight weariness creeping into her voice, ‘and I’d better go and see my colleague, if you’ll excuse me. Molly is back now.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lilia. ‘Maybe another small brandy wouldn’t be too much trouble?’

  The policewoman stood up, brushed down her uniform and nodded at Molly before leaving the room.

  ‘Such a nice woman,’ said Lilia. ‘Quite engrossed in my old pictures and cuttings, she was.’

  ‘How are you feeling, Lilia?’ asked Molly, passing her a replenished glass of Courvoisier.

  ‘You cannot imagine,’ she said dispassionately. ‘I am quite lost. I have nothing. No one. My life is over now, I am undone …’

  There was a tap on the door and WPC Jones came back in, followed by Steve and Dr Jabir. ‘We’ll be on our way,’ said Steve, and Heathcliff immediately stood up and stared at the ambulance man, as if he might pounce.

  ‘No, Heathcliff Sit down,’ said Lilia, sharply, and the dog reluctantly rested on his haunches. His eyes remained fixed on Steve, who moved back towards the door.

  Dr Jabir stepped forward. ‘I’d like you to get some rest, if possible. You’ve had a very nasty shock. Would you like a sedative to help you sleep?’

  ‘I would not,’ said Lilia, proudly. ‘Molly is here. She is all the comfort I require.’ She looked at Molly. There was a pause infused with expectation.

  ‘Er, of course,’ said Molly, aware that all eyes were upon her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lilia. ‘I have witnesses.’

  ‘I’ll telephone your GP in the morning and I’m sure he will be in touch,’ concluded the doctor. ‘I am so sorry for your loss.’

  WPC Jones said, ‘And I’ll be contacting our bereavement-support officer. She will—’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ interrupted Lilia. ‘Thank you for the offer.’ She reached out and squeezed Molly’s hand. ‘We will look after each other. Good morning to you, gentlemen, Miss Jones.’

  It was almost seven o’clock by the time they had all left Kit-Kat Cottage, and a new day was dawning.

  ‘I suppose it is an unusual time to go to bed, but that is what we should do. I know that would be my mother’s suggestion — her solution to any problem.’

  ‘If that’s what you’d like to do,’ said Molly, ‘let me help you. We can call the undertaker later.’

  ‘I cannot sleep in that bed, not with poor Joey still there. Do you mind if I come in with you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Molly, aware that she couldn’t refuse under the circumstances. ‘You go to bed and I’ll tidy up. Is there anyone you’d like me to contact?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Lilia. ‘Could you contact me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Molly, confused by the question.

  ‘I mean, Pd like a bit of contact. Come and lie down with me and be there for me. For a couple of hours, at least. I need to feel the presence of the living, not the emptiness of the dear departed.’

  Molly put her arm round Lilia and helped her up. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course I’ll come with you.’

  Ten minutes later they lay side by side on their backs in Molly’s bed, staring at the ceiling. Heathcliff lay across their legs, pinning them down with his hefty frame. Only he snored. Every now and then one of them would sigh.

  ‘Poor Joey,’ said Lilia, quietly. ‘Gone on his way. Wandered off like a restless tom cat.’

  ‘On to the next life,’ said Molly, philosophically.

  ‘Where I hope he will be able to walk and talk.’

  ‘Or fly,’ said Molly, dreamily.

  ‘Perhaps he’ll be reincarnated as an albatross. That would suit him. He’s had plenty of practice, after all.’

  ‘Or a golden eagle,’ said Molly, closing her eyes and imagining a magnificent bird soaring into the air, free and wild and beautiful. ‘He’s free at last.’

  The next few days were occupied with organising the funeral. Lilia was paralysed with grief, so Molly took care of the arrangements. ‘Should I alert the Olympics committee that Joey has passed on? ‘she asked Lilia. ‘Only I’m sure they’d want to honour him in some way. He was a gold medallist, after all. There’s bound to be an obituary in The Times. There may even be a mention on the news. I expect some officials would like to attend and pay their respects.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Lilia. ‘I am very weak and the thought of all that fuss, the press, the phone calls from Buckingham Palace and the prime minister — it is too much.’

  ‘Well, what about friends from the old days? I expect you and Joey knew so many people from your glamorous past. This would be the perfect opportunity to get in touch with them all again. I’m sure they’d like to pay their last respects.’

  ‘No,’ said Lila firmly. ‘I can’t face it. Let my Joey slip quietly into oblivion. That is what he would want, and what he had, in many senses, already achieved.’

  In the end, there were only six people at the crematorium for Joey’s service, which took place a week after his death. Molly had felt she must invite someone else, so she’d asked Roger, who brought along his partner Freddie, a well-dressed but elderly gentleman who walked with a stick.

  ‘I see Old Father Time is here,’ muttered Lilia, under her thick black veil.

  ‘Sssh!’ said Molly. ‘He’s sitting right behind us.’

  ‘What’s Roger after? Some free sandwiches?’

  ‘I invited him. I thought it would be nice for you to have some support.’

  The other attendees were a strange middle-aged couple dressed in black who sat staring ahead throughout the brief service.

  ‘Look at them,’ hissed Lilia. ‘Grief groupies. I expect they hang around here all day, going to funerals. Weirdos.’

  It was the briefest of ceremonies with no personal tributes, and just a single dark pink rose on the coffin, from Lilia. She’d picked it herself from the garden.

  ‘It’s from my “Angela Rippon” bush,’ she explained, as they filed out afterwards.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Roger. ‘Thanks for asking us. I didn’t know Joey, but he was obviously a very special man who’ll be sadly missed.’

 
Freddie muttered, ‘So very sorry …’ and shook Lilia’s hand solemnly.

  ‘He had a wonderful life,’ said Molly, in an attempt to fill the awkward silence.

  There was no wake afterwards. Molly thought they ought to ask Roger and Freddie back for a drink but Lilia wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I never feed vultures,’ she said, when they were on their way home in a taxi.

  ‘They came to pay their respects,’ said Molly. ‘I think it was very nice of them.’

  Lilia just sniffed and stared out of the window through her veil.

  Back at the house, every sign of Joey had, by now, been erased. The various slings and hoists that had been used to lift and transport him, the special mattress, the nappies, pills, lotions and dressings that were all kept on a big plastic tray had been returned to the hospital or donated to a hospice shop. Even his armchair had been thrown out and the furniture rearranged to fill the gap.

  The morning after Joey’s funeral Molly discovered Lilia staring out of the kitchen window, her face miserable. She put an arm round her and gave her a hug. ‘You’re missing him, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Lilia, her eyes searching the garden. ‘The starling has gone. And I have not seen my little thrush since the night Joey died. I have put out bread for him, whistled for him, but he hasn’t come to see me.’

  ‘Ah, love,’ said Molly.

  ‘Sometimes, in my People’s Friend, I read letters from widows. Their dead husbands revisit them in the form of a robin redbreast hopping around in their garden and fearlessly landing on their shoulders to give them an affectionate peck on the cheek. Why, in my case, has this happened in reverse?’ Lilia turned to Molly for an explanation. ‘Will my thrush ever return?’

  ‘Mine never has,’ said Molly, ‘but I’ve got some very effective ointment if it does.’

  There was silence for a moment, then both women laughed for the first time since Joey had died.

  ‘Maybe he was Joey’s bird, not yours,’ Molly suggested. ‘He’s gone with Joey to guide him to heaven.’

  Lilia shrugged. ‘Either that or next door’s cat got him.’

  Despite the removal of any evidence that Joey ever lived there, Lilia talked about him constantly in terms that indicated how much she missed him and how badly she was coping. ‘It is worst at night,’ she would say, with a trembling voice, when Molly said she was going to bed. ‘I reach out to touch him and he isn’t there. I call his name but he doesn’t answer!’ she wailed. ‘How can I go on? What is the point?’

  Molly would smile and rub her back. ‘Don’t upset yourself now. You know you can always sleep in my bed.’

  As a result, Lilia never did return to her own bedroom, but continued to sleep with Molly, clinging to her with her bony hands and sometimes weeping tearlessly on her neck. ‘Do not leave me, Molly. Do not abandon me at such a time!’ the old lady cried on her shoulder. Heathcliff slept on the bed too, and although it was hot and uncomfortable, Molly could see no way to ask for her privacy back.

  The singing and acting lessons resumed on the day after the funeral and Lilia seemed happiest when she was giving her protégée instructions. In fact, without her time-consuming duties, getting Joey up and fed, Molly found that there were even more hours in the day to spend on her scales, diction and deportment. The cold baths and meagre breakfasts were reinstated.

  Gradually Lilia became her old happy self again. Instead of looking for her starling and thrush each morning, she took to calling sweetly, ‘Here, Pussy! Come to Lilia!’ to next-door’s cat while standing at the door with a bucket of water at the ready. The day she finally managed to drench him, she hummed to herself all afternoon and opened a bottle of port to celebrate.

  ‘You are not smoking enough,’ said Lilia one day, examining a half-empty packet. ‘You should have finished these yesterday and be on to the next packet by now.’

  ‘I’m trying my best but they’re giving me a cough,’ said Molly, defensively. ‘Did you hear me this morning? I sound like Alf Garnett.’

  ‘I heard just a polite clearing of the throat. We are aiming for the full consumptive lung rattle. You are a long way off When I used to share a room in Paris with Edith Piaf, she filled half a bucket with phlegm before breakfast.’

  ‘You lived with Edith Piaf?’ exclaimed Molly. Lila’s extraordinary life never ceased to astound her.

  ‘Yes, my dear, I did. In the Grand Hôtel de Clermont, way back. We were like sisters. It was I who named her “Little Sparrow”, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘What was she like?’ asked Molly.

  ‘Rough. Always crying over one man or another. She stole Charles Aznavour from me.’

  ‘Wow! Charles Aznavour!’

  ‘I inspired him to write that dreadful song — “She”. According to him, I could be the famine or the feast, the beauty or the beast — I’ve never been so insulted in my life!’

  ‘Is that about you?’ asked Molly, open-mouthed.

  ‘I’m afraid so. Not that I get any royalties. Anyway, my point is that you must smoke a lot more if you are going to make progress.’

  ‘Right,’ said Molly, determinedly. ‘I’ll go and have a couple right now.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Lilia. ‘It is for your own good. Mucus is nature’s honey. We shall increase your brandy consumption too, I think. And less food. You are not nearly thin enough.’

  Molly stood in the garden and lit a Gauloise. It felt like sandpaper on the back of her throat but she didn’t mind. Lilia’s anecdote about Edith Piaf had inspired her to try harder. She smoked with gusto, and before she put out the cigarette, she lit another from the stub. She steadied herself on the wall as the strong cigarettes made her giddy and a little nauseous. But no one had ever said being a successful singer was easy. Lilia was teaching her so much. She must channel all the emotions and heartbreak of the Daniel and Simon affair into her singing, just as Edith had done. Lilia was a severe and demanding tutor but at least she had faith in Molly, had a vision. It was important to give herself over to her, to allow her mentor full access and to obey all her instructions. Lilia was going to mould her into something out of the ordinary. Otherwise she would just plod along, working in third-rate musical theatre all her life. What could be worse than that? This was a time of transformation and eventually, with Lilia’s help, she would emerge from Kit-Kat Cottage a better person. A star in waiting.

  Molly allowed herself to daydream for a minute or two. She saw herself on a big stage in front of several thousand wildly enthusiastic people, who clapped and whistled their appreciation. She was thin and beautiful and she bowed graciously several times as the applause went on and on. She sang songs of lost love and hard times in a husky, hauntingly melodic voice. She sang for all the sadness and heartbreak in the world and touched everyone in the audience. Tears ran down her cheeks, glistening in the spotlight, and rose petals rained down from her devoted fans up in the gods.

  Eventually, all the cigarettes and brandy paid off While Molly was singing her scales one afternoon, there was another sudden break in her voice, more dramatic than the last. This time, the note gurgled and shuddered. Molly was so alarmed she stopped singing, but Lilia rapped her knuckles on the piano and told her urgently to continue. Molly tried the same note and again her voice vibrated with a new, sticky tone.

  Lilia clapped with delight. ‘Yes! That is what I have been waiting for!’ Her eyes shone with joy.

  Molly clutched her throat and laughed, shocked by the sound that had emerged. Her voice had dropped a full octave. It was as if Aled Jones had changed, mid-sentence, into Joe Cocker.

  ‘Again, quickly!’ commanded Lilia.

  Molly sang all the scales through twice, and the new voice became stronger and more resonant. When she finished she flung her arms round Lilia. ‘Oh, thank you, Lilia, thank you!’

  ‘At last,’ said Lilia. ‘Listen to the richness of your voice now, the depth of expression, the soulful pitch. Now we can put ,,vintage” on the label.
’

  ‘I have found my voice?’ said an emotional Molly.

  ‘The voice you need to express your inner self,’ said Lilia, solemnly.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Molly.

  Lilia stood up and paced the room. ‘I have such plans for you. It is all a question of alignment. We start with the broken heart. This is essential for any great artist. We cannot experience the true depth, the divinity of human experience without it. I could not break it for you. It is a man’s job. You came to me primed and ready to evolve. Now we have the voice, the rest is easy.’

  ‘What is the rest?’ asked Molly, eagerly.

  ‘Aesthetics, mostly. Presentation, let’s call it. Image.’

  ‘Hair, makeup and costume, do you mean?’ asked Molly.

  Lila stopped pacing and studied Molly from a few yards away. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘Although it is very quaint of you to think so.’ She opened the Chinese cabinet and took out the brandy bottle. ‘We have a way to go yet, I can see. This is not a theatrical role we are discussing. A great singer is not an actress, paid to deliver someone else’s lines while simulating emotions for the riffraff in the auditorium. A singer of the calibre I fully expect you to become is giving of themselves. It is a major difference. When I sang at the Café de Paris, when I serenaded my public at an open-air concert in Central Park, even when I sang in the bath, I cried real tears of blood. It was a cry from the soul. We give and we give until it hurts, and then we give some more.’

  ‘What happens now, then?’ asked Molly, wide-eyed. She was aware that a crucial stage had been reached and it was time for something new.

  ‘We shall begin work on a suitable repertoire of songs for you.’

  ‘I love that idea,’ said Molly, excitedly.

  ‘I have already been in touch with Roger. I explained to him what our plans for your future are, and as he owed me for the pleasant afternoon he spent at the crematorium, he has given me the number of an excellent pianist who is available for the next few weeks. His name is Geoffrey. I hesitate to bring a man into the house, but needs must.’